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"Control of After-Position"

I am going to tell you that, for quite a long time, it will pay you to make this the guiding principle of all your cannon play. If you can make your cannons and steer the first object ball where you want it with reasonable exactitude, you will be decidedly useful behind a billiard cue. Then you can turn your attention on the most difficult thing in billiards, the positional control of all three balls when playing cannons. But if you attempt three ball control when your billiards is raw and unformed, you are setting yourself an impossible task. You must reach this point of achievement by degrees, and your first step must be striving to control the first object-ball positionally as well as directing the cue-ball to make the cannon. By the time you can do this at all consistently, you will not need any telling about the difficulty of controlling the second object-ball in cannon play-you will know all about it.

Of course, you must apply this principle with ordinary judgment. If you have a baby cannon left direct from white to red, and a mere tap will enable you to place the red over a pocket, you do it and leave the general principle to take care of itself for the time being. But outside these exceptional instances, the safe rule is to concentrate on getting the first object-ball where you want it. Figure 17 gives another illustration of this. Here we have all three balls behind the baulk line, with a screw-back cannon from white to red the obvious shot to play. The cannon itself is quite easy if you apply screw in accordance with my instructions in Chapter Three. A little left side will help the stroke, but the main thing I want you to watch is the direction of the first object-ball. If you play this against the top cushion at the angle indicated by the continuous line in my diagram, it will return into good position near the other balls when the cannon is made. You should play a quick stroke with plenty of life in it, and if you shape at the shot with confidence, you will soon get the cannon and leave the balls together time after time. The ball-to-ball contact is almost full, so nearly so that if you aim to pot the red at the right place on the top cushion, the cannon is absolutely a dead certainty providing that you strike your ball correctly.